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Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to this episode of the Superhero Ethics podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Matthew. I'm joined by my regular co host Riki,
Speaker 3: and today we're talking about Gundam. Gundam is, for those
Speaker 3: of you who have probably at least heard about it
Speaker 3: in some way those who may know it very well,
Speaker 3: a long running anime franchise that has had many different
Speaker 3: brands and video games and anime shows, and most recently
Speaker 3: had a anime that came to Netflix. We're similar I
Speaker 3: believe to Terminator zero. This was recorded with the intention
Speaker 3: of having an English and a Japanese speaking cast, and
Speaker 3: so I watched the English version. Riki, I think you
Speaker 3: watched the Japanese language version, but we'll talk more about that,
Speaker 3: and we wanted to talk about it today through a
Speaker 3: couple of lenses. Gundam is something that has come up
Speaker 3: a number of times when Riki are talking. We've talked
Speaker 3: about the Mecca anime genre, and this is by many
Speaker 3: people considered to be the first and often kind of
Speaker 3: like the dominant one out there, so that shaped a
Speaker 3: lot of what became known as the genre. We've been
Speaker 3: having conversations a lot about the way fascism can play
Speaker 3: into stories of superheroes, and uh anime being one particular
Speaker 3: area where that can come up, and Riki had said
Speaker 3: this was a good one to watch, and then kind
Speaker 3: of a related issue the way that Germans and Germany
Speaker 3: are often portrayed in anime as one that sort of
Speaker 3: I've been interested to talk more about with Riekey because
Speaker 3: I've seen it a lot and not exactly sure what
Speaker 3: it means. Had some thoughts, and we'd suggested that this
Speaker 3: one might be kind of part of that conversation. I
Speaker 3: think that though that and the Fascism may wind up
Speaker 3: being their own episodes, and it maybe we just kind
Speaker 3: of dip our them today as part of talking about Gundam.
Speaker 3: But I wanted to kind of frame what we're gonna
Speaker 3: be talking about today grially, because I know this most
Speaker 3: recent show is one that has sparked a lot of conversation,
Speaker 3: a lot of controversy, with a lot of people really
Speaker 3: not liking it for a lot of reasons. I can
Speaker 3: really understand. I am someone who Riky definitely being one
Speaker 3: of them. I am someone who this was my introduction
Speaker 3: to Gundham. I'd actually ask Riky what he thinks I
Speaker 3: should have watched first, and he suggested I watched this
Speaker 3: one because well, obviously this story fits into a larger
Speaker 3: narrative that I'm gonna learn about today. I watched it
Speaker 3: going in knowing nothing, and I found it a complete
Speaker 3: story and I didn't find myself like there's a lot
Speaker 3: that I didn't know. But I think the show kind
Speaker 3: of intentionally takes advantage of that. So we're going to
Speaker 3: talk first about the show itself, because I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people this is just the only one they've watched,
Speaker 3: and then we are going to talk about in the
Speaker 3: larger contacts. So if you're listening to me to talk
Speaker 3: about what I know just from the show and you're like, wait, wait, no,
Speaker 3: but don't you know the larger context, I promise you
Speaker 3: we will get to that and on. Here in superhero ethics,
Speaker 3: we're mostly concerned with the ethical choices, the moral choices,
Speaker 3: the messaging of a show, and it's it's who is
Speaker 3: the protagonist and what is their point of view and
Speaker 3: why are they fighting and all that. We're not really
Speaker 3: as interested in the artistry of the shows. But it
Speaker 3: is an issue that has come up quite a lot,
Speaker 3: and I think it's going to illustrate a very interesting
Speaker 3: difference between Riky and I. So Riki, let me first
Speaker 3: ask what do you think of the animation in the show?
Speaker 4: I hated it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I want to address a couple of points. First,
Speaker 5: I did. I actually didn't watch the Japanese language version.
Speaker 5: It just it defaulted to playing in English and I
Speaker 5: didn't really think of it.
Speaker 4: But I also think.
Speaker 5: That's fine because this is not something that was like
Speaker 5: most anime, was not something that was recorded and like
Speaker 5: drawn for Japanese and then translated, right. I like, I
Speaker 5: don't know what the process was, but it does seem
Speaker 5: like it was a just will animated GENI like, I
Speaker 5: didn't pay too much attention to the lit movement and such,
Speaker 5: so I'm not sure, but it does seem like it
Speaker 5: was just like, yeah, we're gonna make this in Japanese
Speaker 5: and English at the very least. Gundam in general, yeah, is.
Speaker 5: I think it's considered the longest running anime franchise or
Speaker 5: meca franchise one or the one or both, and it's
Speaker 5: it started the like real robots anime genre. Prior to Gundam,
Speaker 5: there was what's called super Robots, which is a little
Speaker 5: bit more like Power Ranger style, like fighting against monsters,
Speaker 5: and and there's no like mechanical realism to the robots,
Speaker 5: and in fact, they're often not robots. They're just like
Speaker 5: beings that are robotics sometimes.
Speaker 3: And the discussion of Neon Genesis Evangelian for a long un.
Speaker 5: Well, that's that's also that's like another that's after Gundam
Speaker 5: and is a separate newer thing. Gundam specifically like started this.
Speaker 5: We want to think about robots realistically and like how
Speaker 5: they would be used in military and it is very
Speaker 5: beloved because of that, because it started this whole genre,
Speaker 5: and you can really feel the realism in much of
Speaker 5: the Gundam franchise. And that's one of the reasons I
Speaker 5: love it is that I kind of consider myself a
Speaker 5: Gundam historian, and I've obsessed over the franchise so much
Speaker 5: that I like know all the dates, I know the people,
Speaker 5: and like the treaties, and it very much like the
Speaker 5: what it's called the Universal Century, which you say in Japanese,
Speaker 5: is the main Gundum canon timeline, and then there's a
Speaker 5: bunch of like alternate you know, like the way Marvel does.
Speaker 4: Six one six and then other ones.
Speaker 5: Right, the Universal Century is the one I love the
Speaker 5: most and consider myself a historian of like I just
Speaker 5: I live and breathe this stuff. So coming back to
Speaker 5: this gun Requiem for Vengeance, you asked about the animation,
Speaker 5: it's I just think it's bad. It's like very bad
Speaker 5: two thousand's video game animation. And in fact, it was
Speaker 5: made on the Unreal Engine, which I think has started
Speaker 5: out as like video game animation engine, and you can
Speaker 5: just see it like it's it's just cheap in a
Speaker 5: way that like characters don't move realistically, like they clip
Speaker 5: into like their arms clip into their sides and stuff,
Speaker 5: and all these kinds of problems that for a video
Speaker 5: game like you, you often don't care like you see
Speaker 5: in video games like whatever. For an animated TV series,
Speaker 5: I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't like it at all.
Speaker 5: Like I think it's a problem that they use this.
Speaker 5: Either it needs to get better or that they need
Speaker 5: to not do this. In my opinion. The other thing
Speaker 5: about the animation, I just like the faces were like
Speaker 5: weirdly glowing and slick. It like seemed like they always
Speaker 5: had a sheen of sweat and yeah, like they were
Speaker 5: in stressful situations and sweaty, but it was it didn't
Speaker 5: seem like a realistic sweat sene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the video game description is very apt.
Speaker 3: They felt to me very It felt to me very
Speaker 3: much like a long video game cut scene.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it was like the unreal engine is
Speaker 5: like four videos, so and interesting that they're using it
Speaker 5: for television. I'm not I don't want like, I don't
Speaker 5: want this to be like the animator suck. Yeah, right,
Speaker 5: Like they're doing a job and they're working. They were
Speaker 5: told to work with this technology, and they did it.
Speaker 5: I just think the technology is not up to like
Speaker 5: a television standards of animation.
Speaker 3: I think all of that is completely legitimate, and what
Speaker 3: I'm about to say has nothing to do with the
Speaker 3: discussion of the artistry of it. And I can completely
Speaker 3: understand and why people who love anime and love animation
Speaker 3: hated this. I thought it looked weird and it's far
Speaker 3: and away the easiest to understand anime I've ever seen,
Speaker 3: and for that I loved it. One of the biggest
Speaker 3: frustrations that you talked about, like the artistry of the
Speaker 3: battles Neon Genesis Evangelian, I just didn't understand what was
Speaker 3: going on. I didn't have a sense of what robot
Speaker 3: was where, and who was attacking what and what was
Speaker 3: happening because it was done in this very impressionistic artistic style.
Speaker 3: And it may well be just like my brain. I've
Speaker 3: always had a brain that doesn't really grock art in
Speaker 3: a physical way. Like I looked to the Mona Lisa
Speaker 3: and I was like, it's a woman smiling. I don't
Speaker 3: forget why it became the thing it became, and again
Speaker 3: it because.
Speaker 4: I mean, it became what it became.
Speaker 5: Like, I think it is a good piece of art,
Speaker 5: but largely like because it was stolen, it got a
Speaker 5: lot of notoriety.
Speaker 3: Oh that's possible. I don't want to get into that tangent.
Speaker 3: I just mean as an example of people look at
Speaker 3: art and tell me all the things they see in it,
Speaker 3: and I don't doubt them. I don't think they're wrong.
Speaker 3: I just don't see it. And so for me this
Speaker 3: felt like someone's saying, we want to do animation because
Speaker 3: it's a lot cheaper and easier, especially all the crazy
Speaker 3: special effects we're doing, but we're just going to try
Speaker 3: and make it as close to reality as we can
Speaker 3: with the animation technology that we have right now or
Speaker 3: that we can afford. And again, I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's because I just don't have an artistic mind, or
Speaker 3: maybe because I didn't grow up watching anime, Like I
Speaker 3: haven't seen most of it, so I just haven't kind
Speaker 3: of learned the artistic language of the genre. But for
Speaker 3: whatever it is, I loved it because it kind of
Speaker 3: said to me, you don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 3: This is just the story is the story, and I
Speaker 3: really loved the story of this because really and I'll
Speaker 3: give a summary of it in a bit, but it's
Speaker 3: really its idea of like starting from the perspective of
Speaker 3: these soldiers and their desire for vengeance in a defeated
Speaker 3: situation and are they going to survive? And like it
Speaker 3: really does some great things I think with playing with
Speaker 3: is the protagonist necessarily the hero and drawing the camera
Speaker 3: back on that. And for me, because I didn't have
Speaker 3: to think about what is the intention, what's the meaning
Speaker 3: of the art, it was just like, here's where this
Speaker 3: robot is, Here's where that robot is, so you understand
Speaker 3: why they're saying these things that they're saying. I loved
Speaker 3: it me. I totally not what other people like, and
Speaker 3: that's fine, but well, okay.
Speaker 5: I want I agree with you that the mobile suit
Speaker 5: fights in this are they were the best part of
Speaker 5: the animation. And I also want to kind of broaden
Speaker 5: the scope that in Gundam, like I already said, you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's more realistic, like treating them as real weapons
Speaker 5: of war. The time period that this story takes place
Speaker 5: in is the is during the first Gundom the original series,
Speaker 5: and that is also when the gun dams were the
Speaker 5: least technologically advanced, and so they're more grounded. Like when
Speaker 5: you get to future Gundams, they fly around faster and
Speaker 5: like do all of the anime things and like spinning
Speaker 5: and stuff. In this one they are the technologically they
Speaker 5: are walking tanks, right, And and this Requiem for Vengeance
Speaker 5: specifically like taking place on Earth, like because part of
Speaker 5: the story fighting takes place in space. You know, they're
Speaker 5: like even like they do fly in space, but here
Speaker 5: like they they kind of like do rocket jumps, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 5: And so the movement of the fighting is all like
Speaker 5: much more grounded.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Literally, Yeah, it felt a lot more realistic in
Speaker 3: that kind of a way. I think there's good and
Speaker 3: bad parts to that for sure that we'll talk about.
Speaker 3: So with that, let's talk about the story itself. And again,
Speaker 3: I know that there's a much larger story. I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna give. I'm gonna give my understanding of the story,
Speaker 3: and let's talk about the story itself and then talk
Speaker 3: about it in larger context. So we opened with this
Speaker 3: group who is piloting a bunch of mobile suits that
Speaker 3: at first I thought were gonna be Gundams, but I
Speaker 3: learned they were called Zakus, and they're doing this on
Speaker 3: behalf of this group from outer space who it's described
Speaker 3: as the Revolutionary War, and they're fighting a rebellion, as
Speaker 3: they say, for their independence, and they are all people
Speaker 3: from space fighting against Earth's domination, but they're doing it.
Speaker 3: Most of this battle takes place in southeastern Europe, primarily
Speaker 3: in Romania, and then moving southeast towards Russia and the
Speaker 3: final exit point in Odessa. And immediately part of me
Speaker 3: was thinking, like, huh, huh. The American Revolution didn't invade
Speaker 3: England in order to get its freedom, Like there's something
Speaker 3: off here about a group that's all about how we're
Speaker 3: fighting for our own freedom, but we're also here fighting
Speaker 3: in Earth on Earth, we're invading Earth, and I thought
Speaker 3: that was really interesting. But it's about these group of
Speaker 3: pilots and they fight some battles and then quickly into
Speaker 3: the battle is inserted a mecca that is far more
Speaker 3: powerful and far more technologically advanced than theirs. And this
Speaker 3: is what they describe as a Gundam, and which was
Speaker 3: kind of threw me a little. It's like, oh, that's interesting,
Speaker 3: and they're fighting against the Gundam, and the Gundam is
Speaker 3: kicking their ass, and then they're kind of looking for
Speaker 3: survival and they have this whole plot line about rebuilding
Speaker 3: two new zechas of the you know, their kind of
Speaker 3: version of the Mecca suits, and there's interesting dynamics there.
Speaker 3: But they get these two built, and they learn that
Speaker 3: not only does this other side the enemy, the Federation
Speaker 3: or the e f after is referred to have this
Speaker 3: one hugely impressive gundam, they also have these other things
Speaker 3: called GM's or gyms, which are.
Speaker 5: It's yeah, it's weird, it's spelled GM.
Speaker 4: It's just for.
Speaker 3: Gym, yeah, or gem and and so and and the
Speaker 3: gyms are not quite gundams, but are certainly much more
Speaker 3: powerful than the uh uh that our heroes meccas. There's
Speaker 3: more fighting. They're able to take down the gym, but
Speaker 3: still can't stand up to the Gundam, and a lot
Speaker 3: of their friends die. And there's a lot of talk
Speaker 3: about how our primary protagonist, a woman named Iria Solari
Speaker 3: and uh her her kind of buddy and second in command,
Speaker 3: Lieutenant Lashan, that they are just filled with anger and
Speaker 3: sadness and grief about the law of all of their friends,
Speaker 3: and at one point Lasehan almost is gonna kill the
Speaker 3: helpless pilot when he escapes the gym that they've destroyed,
Speaker 3: and she gets him to stop, and then there's a
Speaker 3: there's a doctor character. There's a lot of discussions about
Speaker 3: like is there room for mercy in this world of
Speaker 3: battle and what's the role of vengeance and things like that,
Speaker 3: and our captain, our protagonist, seems to be mostly against
Speaker 3: the idea of vengeance. We then decide that the best
Speaker 3: way that we can kind of survive dealing with Gundam
Speaker 3: is to steal one of the gyms, because then at
Speaker 3: least we can understand the gym technology, because there's only
Speaker 3: one Gundam, but they're mass producing these gyms, and the
Speaker 3: thought is that if they can steal one, then they
Speaker 3: can kind of, you know, build their own, but also
Speaker 3: understand it, study it, find its weaknesses, hopefully find the
Speaker 3: weakness of the Gundam and take them all down. And
Speaker 3: they try to do that. It fails. As part of
Speaker 3: doing that, they infiltrate the enemy base and there's a
Speaker 3: kid hanging out with the enemy soldiers and that kid
Speaker 3: has a moment with Solari where he basically finds a
Speaker 3: watch that she has that's marked with the symbols of
Speaker 3: the rebellion, the the uh what's the name of them,
Speaker 3: the xeons as they're called, who again have been presented
Speaker 3: to us as the protagonist, but at least design assured
Speaker 3: that the show's doing a very interesting thing of kind
Speaker 3: of making you doubt their own things they believe and
Speaker 3: the uh and kind of related to this, there've been
Speaker 3: uh so back up and so they have this kind
Speaker 3: of moment of connection where he maybe figures out that
Speaker 3: she's a spy but but kind of doesn't turn them in,
Speaker 3: or maybe he just like suspects it, but they have
Speaker 3: a moment of real human connection. She has a son
Speaker 3: back home that she's incredibly worried about and sees the
Speaker 3: Sun in him. Get to the last episode where everyone's
Speaker 3: trying to scramble to Odessa because basically they're deciding that
Speaker 3: this invasion of Earth has not worked at least here
Speaker 3: in this sector the Europe and Asia, and they're all
Speaker 3: retreating back into space through the Port of Odessa, and
Speaker 3: we get one more big battle where she realizes that
Speaker 3: it's that kid who's piloting the Gundam, which for me
Speaker 3: was another like oh, like that's where I started to
Speaker 3: get a clue of like what the largest story might be.
Speaker 3: But I'll get into that. I want to just talk
Speaker 3: about this story itself. She starts to really have empathy
Speaker 3: for him and have a conversation with him well, because
Speaker 3: she has decided that she is going to sacrifice herself
Speaker 3: basically go on a kind of suicide mission so that
Speaker 3: she can let everyone else escape. And she like, she
Speaker 3: maybe can escape, but probably she's just going to die
Speaker 3: with honor because in her words, everyone else has died
Speaker 3: for her, and in some cases quite literally, like Lashawan
Speaker 3: he and his Mecca leap in front of her for
Speaker 3: a death blow that would have destroyed her. That's weighing
Speaker 3: on her mind. She has these dreams where she sees
Speaker 3: all the people who died under her command. But then
Speaker 3: during the fight with a Gundam, she starts talking to
Speaker 3: the kid who's the pilot and trying to get the
Speaker 3: kid to realize that this fight is pointless, as she's saying, like,
Speaker 3: we just want to go back home, and he's saying,
Speaker 3: you all are terrorists. You invited us. If we don't
Speaker 3: kill you, how do we know you're not gonna do
Speaker 3: it again? And and she kind of just doesn't even
Speaker 3: get into that. She's saying, no, just let us go,
Speaker 3: let us go. He has a chance to deliver a
Speaker 3: death blow. He doesn't. He kind of saves her life,
Speaker 3: and then she's kind of like getting up to thank
Speaker 3: him and keep talking. Another one of the Xeon meccas
Speaker 3: find finds them in this position where that Gundam is
Speaker 3: now kind of defenseless and destroys it, killing the kid,
Speaker 3: and she's kind of horrified and outraged about it. And
Speaker 3: then we get to his epilogue, which from what I've read,
Speaker 3: is very controversial and I have some thoughts on it,
Speaker 3: where she basically says that the Xeons have all left
Speaker 3: Europe and Asia, that the only real fighting left is
Speaker 3: in Africa, where it's basically kind of the remnants of
Speaker 3: all these other groups that are left there. They're called
Speaker 3: the remnants, and that mostly they're just out for vengeance
Speaker 3: and mostly they're just fighting to avenge those who have died.
Speaker 3: And she had been right up to the killing of
Speaker 3: that kid, very much like maybe we shouldn't fight, maybe
Speaker 3: we shouldn't fight to protect the kids, and she gives
Speaker 3: this speech which is fundamentally contradictory because she said part
Speaker 3: of what she realizes. She's horrified that the war has
Speaker 3: gotten to the point that kids are being forced to fight,
Speaker 3: and that the child soldiers, but she can't make the
Speaker 3: leap of realizing that it's kind of like that her
Speaker 3: side continuing the war is part of what's forcing that
Speaker 3: to happen. She is like, no, this side is using
Speaker 3: child soldiers. That has to stop, so we need to
Speaker 3: destroy all of them, which means continuing to fight against
Speaker 3: the child soldiers. And that's where it ends. And m hm.
Speaker 3: It was one of those things where I was like,
Speaker 3: either the writers are utterly brilliant and are really asking
Speaker 3: the audience to do their own work in recognizing that
Speaker 3: protagonist is not the good guy here and that's much
Speaker 3: more complicated than the protagonist thinks, or it's incredibly bad
Speaker 3: writing that doesn't realize all the way self contradictory. I
Speaker 3: chose to believe it's more of the first, but yeah,
Speaker 3: just to disagree, Yeah.
Speaker 5: And I just want to know that was a good
Speaker 5: That was a good summary. I want to add part
Speaker 5: of her Solari's motivation and all this and her mentality
Speaker 5: is because kind of eye rolly, she's a mother and
Speaker 5: she left a kid back home in space in Xeon. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and the pocket watch she's carrying is like her her
Speaker 5: item of memory right of him, and I think before
Speaker 5: the final battle, she gives the watch to the mechanic
Speaker 5: who she was friends with prior to joining up and says,
Speaker 5: give this to my son, Yeah, when you get back
Speaker 5: to space.
Speaker 3: And I would also say so she has that mother part,
Speaker 3: which I agree with you is a little cliche, and
Speaker 3: I rollie or a lot of cliche. She also has
Speaker 3: a dead husband who died in other fighting quite recently,
Speaker 3: and I think that's for me. I saw that as
Speaker 3: kind of the two sides that were pulling on her
Speaker 3: was the do you seek vengeance for the dead or
Speaker 3: do you seek to protect the ones who are still alive?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, okay, where do you?
Speaker 4: Where do you want to start? Because I'm ready.
Speaker 3: It seems like you had a different take and perhaps
Speaker 3: don't give the writers quite as much credit as I do.
Speaker 5: So here's my problem, Gunda. Like I said, especially Universal
Speaker 5: Century has a vast history, like there's a lot of
Speaker 5: material and similar to like a Star Wars or a
Speaker 5: mar thing, like there's cannon and you if you choose
Speaker 5: to play in this sandbox you have to acknowledge and
Speaker 5: appreciate the cannon, right. I think with something like Marvel,
Speaker 5: it's more complicated because you know, they reset timelines and
Speaker 5: different writers and they change stuff.
Speaker 4: You see stuff as much tighter.
Speaker 5: In my opinion, I think it's more similar to Star
Speaker 5: Wars than especially like Disney Star Wars, where they kind
Speaker 5: of reset and say now, like we've created our sandbox,
Speaker 5: like we got to stick.
Speaker 3: To it, right, yah. So tell us more about the
Speaker 3: larger context that the story takes place in.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, the the one minute history of the
Speaker 5: One Year War is that, yes, there are space colonies
Speaker 5: and then there's Earth, and it's all humans, there's no aliens.
Speaker 5: The space colonies feel pressed by the Earth Federation government
Speaker 5: basically like they were forced to move off of Earth.
Speaker 5: Like there's this whole ecological aspect of it, where like
Speaker 5: you know, like we are now, it's like Earth is
Speaker 5: suffering because of humanity, So we're just going to offload
Speaker 5: a bunch of humans to space colonies and let the
Speaker 5: Earth heal, right, But the living conditions on the space
Speaker 5: colonies are not great because they're space colonies and so
Speaker 5: like there's an oppression and a kind of forced relocation
Speaker 5: aspect to all of it. One of the colonies side
Speaker 5: three rebels against the Federation and they declare themselves the
Speaker 5: Principality of Xeon Ok and they begin this war that's
Speaker 5: historically called the One Year War. And they have a
Speaker 5: technological advantage in that they were the first to develop
Speaker 5: mobile suits, specifically the Zaku, and then they mass produce
Speaker 5: them and kind of overwhelm the Federation with this technology.
Speaker 5: And where the original series starts is that the Federation
Speaker 5: has finally developed their own mobile suits, the Gundam, and
Speaker 5: it has taken like all of their study of the
Speaker 5: Zaku and created like this even better model. So like
Speaker 5: the gun Dam is like vastly superior, and specifically that
Speaker 5: we see in this one is that it uses beam
Speaker 5: weapon technology. Like all of the Zaku fight with conventional
Speaker 5: like machine guns and grenades and stuff, whereas the Gundam
Speaker 5: has like such a powerful engine, I guess that it
Speaker 5: is able to use that to charge a beam cannon, right,
Speaker 5: and that's just like overwhelmingly powerful as we see in
Speaker 5: this in this show. So the Gundam like turns the
Speaker 5: tide of the war, and of course the Federation starts
Speaker 5: developing the gyms as well that also can use beam weapons,
Speaker 5: and they defeat Xeon. And in the original series, the
Speaker 5: Gundam is the protagonist, right, it's piloted by the kid.
Speaker 5: You know, we'll get into the kid aspect. Who is
Speaker 5: the protagonist of the show, Amrode. He's the hero, and
Speaker 5: so it's all told from like his perspective and his struggles,
Speaker 5: and so first off, like this show just flips that
Speaker 5: right right where the Xeon group. Solari is unquestionably the protagonist.
Speaker 4: I'm never gonna.
Speaker 5: Call her the hero because because of Gundam history, which
Speaker 5: we'll get more into. But I did think it was interesting,
Speaker 5: especially in the first episode, the way that they say
Speaker 5: the film, the way that they film the Gundam had
Speaker 5: such a terrifying, like horror movie vibe, the way that
Speaker 5: it stocked them through the forest and was like even
Speaker 5: though it's paint scheme is white, yeah, it was like
Speaker 5: in darkness and like barely like backlit by the moonlight,
Speaker 5: and had had such a menace. So I liked that
Speaker 5: aspect of it. Like, yeah, because even in the original series,
Speaker 5: they the Xeon enemies would call the Gundam the White Devil,
Speaker 5: and they were afraid of it because it was like
Speaker 5: just so powerful. They're like, how do we defeat this thing?
Speaker 3: So in the original because for the story you just told,
Speaker 3: it sounds like like, you know, oppressed colonies fighting against
Speaker 3: the empire. I'm gonna be on the side of the
Speaker 3: oppressed colonies.
Speaker 5: Mm hm.
Speaker 3: But it sounds like in Gundam the original, we are
Speaker 3: on the side of the Federation. How do they justify that?
Speaker 3: Is it about the fact that Xeon is no longer
Speaker 3: just fighting for its own freedom, that now it's invading
Speaker 3: Earth and kind of.
Speaker 5: Well here, here's where we get into some war criming.
Speaker 3: Okay, In in.
Speaker 5: The prehistory, like before the Gundam series started, the Xeon
Speaker 5: Forces used poison gas to wipe out the population of
Speaker 5: another space colony. So I think it was basically like
Speaker 5: a space colony that was like, no, we don't want
Speaker 5: to be a part of your rebellion because it wasn't
Speaker 5: like a unified space colony thing like. It started with
Speaker 5: Side three. South Side is just like the names of
Speaker 5: the colonies that they get with numbers. Started with Side three,
Speaker 5: and I believe Side four said that they were going
Speaker 5: to be neutral, and so the Xeon Forces attack side
Speaker 5: for gas the entire population of the colony, and then
Speaker 5: used the husk of the colony because these are like
Speaker 5: multiple mile long things right where people live. They are
Speaker 5: cylindrical and they and they rotate to provide the illusion
Speaker 5: of day night like they rotate and have like open
Speaker 5: and closed panels that let sunlight in.
Speaker 3: Oh, so they're just floating. This isn't like a colony
Speaker 3: on a moon of Jupi.
Speaker 5: No, okay, yeah, sorry, yeah you wouldn't.
Speaker 4: You would know that, I apologize.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they are space stations. Yeah, but they're huge, and
Speaker 5: so uh they gas side for I think it's for
Speaker 5: you know, right in and correct me if I'm wrong
Speaker 5: on this. And then they use the husk of this
Speaker 5: multi mile long space colony and they drop it on Earth.
Speaker 5: They do a colony drop. It is a horrific, you know,
Speaker 5: terrorist action right that they were They were aiming for Jabbureau,
Speaker 5: which is in South America. It was the Federation's like
Speaker 5: primary military base on Earth. And because physics is complicated
Speaker 5: and and and stuff, they miss and it hits Australia
Speaker 5: and so in Gundam in the Gundam World, south East Australia.
Speaker 5: You know, like Canberra, Sydney, et cetera. Right, there's a
Speaker 5: massive crater. There's just like a like a like one.
Speaker 5: I'd say one tenth of Australia is like carved out.
Speaker 4: There's just a crater. And of course, like millions of.
Speaker 5: People died in that colony drop in addition to potentially
Speaker 5: millions in the gassing. So that's what Xeon did, right,
Speaker 5: And I'm just like, there's no you can't again, like
Speaker 5: if you were going to play in the Universal century,
Speaker 5: you can't get around that. And then later in the war,
Speaker 5: the Xeon forces use a colony laser, which again, like
Speaker 5: I think they killed all of the inhabitants of this
Speaker 5: colony and then modified the cylinder to be a massive
Speaker 5: laser barrel and fired it on the Federation fleet, which
Speaker 5: that is a little more like okay, like it's a
Speaker 5: military action. You're not firing on civilians, but it's like
Speaker 5: another uh you know, mass weapon of mass destruction that
Speaker 5: they're using. So that that's like a aspect of Xeon
Speaker 5: is that they don't they don't care, like they they
Speaker 5: will use whatever means necessary, and I will I guess,
Speaker 5: I guess I'll mention this.
Speaker 4: Now there is a.
Speaker 5: There's a whole race aspect to all of this in Gundam.
Speaker 5: It's very complicated, but like traditionally, it's not something we
Speaker 5: think of as race in terms of you know, black, white, Asian,
Speaker 5: et cetera. It is space no They call them space nooid.
Speaker 5: I think they actually use this term in this show
Speaker 5: space nooid versus earthnoid, and specifically space nooids because they
Speaker 5: live in space. Some of them have started to evolve
Speaker 5: and gain like these weird psychic powers, and they're called
Speaker 5: new types, which I also believe they mentioned in the
Speaker 5: show Like Arenas, They're like, she might be a new
Speaker 5: type because she's got this weird like sixth sense.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, and she she senses that a Gundam is
Speaker 3: coming to attack them.
Speaker 5: Because undoubtedly the pilot of the Gundam is also a
Speaker 5: new type. And on these shows, new types often have
Speaker 5: like this connection where they can sense you know, like
Speaker 5: the force, like a presence I haven't sensed in years,
Speaker 5: so they can they can sense each other. And the
Speaker 5: thing with new types is like, it is it is
Speaker 5: a It is a different race. It is a they
Speaker 5: call it an evolution, right, but it's similar to I
Speaker 5: would call it similar to mutants in X Men, where
Speaker 5: humanity is taking the step and evolving, and now there's
Speaker 5: this conflict between mutants, you know, Homo superior and Homo sapien.
Speaker 5: In Gundam, the conflict is between space nooids and earth nooids.
Speaker 5: And many of the space noids are evolving into new types, right,
Speaker 5: and some of them, just like in you know, Magneto,
Speaker 5: consider themselves superior, right, and that we have to wipe
Speaker 5: out the earth noids.
Speaker 3: Right there and so, and we're better than the many ways,
Speaker 3: so we need to.
Speaker 5: And help humanity to evolve to its next stage. So
Speaker 5: I a lot of a lot of people in the
Speaker 5: Gundam fandom complain that like, oh, like this, like it's
Speaker 5: not racist. It absolutely is, Like it's just not race
Speaker 5: in the traditional sense that you think of it, but
Speaker 5: you can call it an allegory, but I think it is,
Speaker 5: Like if this were real, it absolutely would be a
Speaker 5: racist thing to say, like spacemoid slash and you types
Speaker 5: are superior to earthenoids and hence like we're gonna wipe
Speaker 5: them out, Like that's that's genocide.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and I thought that that I was curious
Speaker 3: about the role race played in this because I did
Speaker 3: know going into this that you had said one of
Speaker 3: the things to kind of be on the lookout for
Speaker 3: is the Germanic aspect on how that kind of factors in.
Speaker 3: And to me, the uh so Lari and her team
Speaker 3: and the other xeons we meet are fairly racially diverse
Speaker 3: in terms of like their names and their appearances and
Speaker 3: how that references to Earth races that we know about,
Speaker 3: you know, the modern day understanding of Earth and race. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, obviously this is set far in the future,
Speaker 3: but you have Alfie is very clearly black and and
Speaker 3: and uh Eerie feels like European of some kind to me.
Speaker 3: And and then the only really kind of explicitly uh
Speaker 3: Asian or Japanese character is, uh, let me make sure
Speaker 3: I get the name right, uh, doctor doctor Oni Kasuka.
Speaker 3: Uh get doctor Oniksuga and then uh and and there's
Speaker 3: one character who is very much kind of like the
Speaker 3: enemy within. He's the major of commands the base that
Speaker 3: they go to, or repairs and safety, and he's very
Speaker 3: much like, all I care about is protecting my own
Speaker 3: and he has he wants to like have them leave.
Speaker 3: He doesn't want them to build the Gundams because he
Speaker 3: doesn't want to be attacked. He's like very much like
Speaker 3: kind of portrayed as a coward and a like strict
Speaker 3: by the rules, hooray for me and mine and to
Speaker 3: hell with everyone else. And he seems to me at
Speaker 3: least very Germanic. He has a kind of fairly German
Speaker 3: name as Major Rone, and I think the first name
Speaker 3: is also fairly Germanic, but I forget what it is.
Speaker 3: His uniform looks kind of like grayish in it, kind
Speaker 3: of like very much the World War two German way.
Speaker 3: But then when we meet the people from the Federation
Speaker 3: and Creator, we only meet three of them. Two of
Speaker 3: them are adults, and one of them is this kid.
Speaker 3: They all look basically racially homogenous, which it first got
Speaker 3: me wondering, like, wait are they so? Are they supposed
Speaker 3: to be the German stand in in this? And then
Speaker 3: later as I went on and realized more and more
Speaker 3: the xeons are actually probably the Nazi stand in in
Speaker 3: this was like, oh, okay, I see what we're doing here.
Speaker 3: But I just thought all that was pretty interesting, the
Speaker 3: way they were playing with that.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. Yeah. I have not thought deeply about like
Speaker 5: modern race in Gundom because the original like nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 5: I imagine it was very like homogeneously generically Japanese looking,
Speaker 5: right people, right, So yes, Like I think it's good
Speaker 5: what they did here to have you know, like have
Speaker 5: black people in Gundam like in general, like there need
Speaker 5: to be needs to be more modern racial representation like
Speaker 5: this in anime, right, you know, as long as it's
Speaker 5: this is a fictional world, like if it takes place
Speaker 5: in Japan, I understand, like why you would make it
Speaker 5: more homogeneous, but this is a completely fictional world. And yeah,
Speaker 5: like it's still Earth, so black people exist.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: Where am I going with this? I don't know? Could
Speaker 5: talk about the Germanic.
Speaker 4: Undertones?
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, why don't we do that a bit?
Speaker 3: And then I want to get back to like the
Speaker 3: story of this and how it does or doesn't fit
Speaker 3: into the cannon that we're talking about. So let me
Speaker 3: just kind of lay out what I know here. In
Speaker 3: Neon Genesis Evangelian the which we did a whole episode
Speaker 3: on it, but I'll give the very brief summary that
Speaker 3: like is it is set specifically in Japan. There's mecha pilots.
Speaker 3: They're fighting these big bad angels, it's a whole thing.
Speaker 3: But most of the characters we have are Japanese until
Speaker 3: this girl is introduced, who's kind of an antagonist, kind
Speaker 3: of a love interest, is very strict about the rules
Speaker 3: and it's very much bullying our hero Shinji, and she
Speaker 3: is specifically said to be from Germany and has a
Speaker 3: kind of more German sounding name and is explicitly said
Speaker 3: to be half German half Japanese. Also in Foamntal Alchemist,
Speaker 3: which you haven't seen yet, I believe, and we'll talk
Speaker 3: about another point the debt, they're very much clearer allusions
Speaker 3: to Germany and that the big sort of enemy of
Speaker 3: the Empire. Uh like he wants to call himself. I
Speaker 3: think it's like they're meant to be kind of very Germanic.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of German imagery, and he calls himself
Speaker 3: the word is translated as furor, and the justification for
Speaker 3: that is that he's German, and he's using the word feurer,
Speaker 3: which is literally just a German word for leader, but
Speaker 3: of course has all the Hitler connotations that and German people.
Speaker 3: You know, if you had better underting this right in
Speaker 3: my erhanding, is it for a while at least that
Speaker 3: word wasn't used as much for leader because of those connotations.
Speaker 4: Ye would you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like Adolf used to just be
Speaker 3: a popular name, and like most German children are not
Speaker 3: named that anymore to why you know, think of like
Speaker 3: someone like Dolph Lungren. A lot of people who'd been
Speaker 3: born Adolf changed their names to Oh it's not about that,
Speaker 3: or just like people who are like you know, like
Speaker 3: if your great great grandfather was named Adolf and you
Speaker 3: wanted to keep that family tradition, Yeah, you didn't want
Speaker 3: to name they called them Dolf. Okay, but yeah, so
Speaker 3: talk to me, and again this will probably its own episode,
Speaker 3: but give me the like five minute spiel on Germans
Speaker 3: and German imagery in anime.
Speaker 4: In general.
Speaker 3: Well, what what you're seeing, how like what we see
Speaker 3: in this particular show Gundam, and how you think it
Speaker 3: played the larger narrative that you've you've mentioned once or
Speaker 3: twice before that it plays into I.
Speaker 4: Mean, there's a lot of it. It's uncomfortable.
Speaker 5: I you know, it's hard because you don't know what
Speaker 5: each individual creator of anime like why they are making
Speaker 5: decisions right right, unless you can find interviews and stuff.
Speaker 5: But my impression overall, like in general on anime is
Speaker 5: that like German and like specifically, Nazi imagery is used
Speaker 5: because they're they're the historical villain right for the twentieth century,
Speaker 5: and it's very iconic imagery, like they had such distinct
Speaker 5: uniforms and the use of flags and their propaganda and
Speaker 5: their rallies, and that's very powerful, like it was powerful
Speaker 5: in the thirties and forties, and that's that's why things happen.
Speaker 5: And you can use that imagery to portray this kind
Speaker 5: of power and in this case like evil coded power,
Speaker 5: like these are the bad guys. Like that's what you
Speaker 5: say when you use Nazi Germany imagery in something. And
Speaker 5: I also believe that it happens a lot in anime
Speaker 5: because you can't use imperial Japanese imagery, right, And I
Speaker 5: say can't, like you could like there's no law against it,
Speaker 5: like there I think I believe there are laws against
Speaker 5: it in Germany on displaying Nazi imagery specifically, but it
Speaker 5: it would raise more it would raise too many questions,
Speaker 5: right if you did that in Japan, it's like, oh,
Speaker 5: like why are you doing this? Even though like the
Speaker 5: politics of it is very complicated, and there are even
Speaker 5: like modern politicians who try to whitewash history and the
Speaker 5: crimes that Japan committed during the World War Two and
Speaker 5: preceding and long for you know, as many now reactionary
Speaker 5: governments are doing long for the glory days of their power.
Speaker 3: Right, But it's I think nine of our listeners already
Speaker 3: know this and understand it. But just to draw the
Speaker 3: explicit line, the Imperial Japan you're talking about was not
Speaker 3: the Nazis by any means, but were the allies of
Speaker 3: the Nazis in World War Two, And so that kind
Speaker 3: of I can see the desire of kind of wanting
Speaker 3: to separate those two by those who kind of want
Speaker 3: to look back fondly at Imperial Japan.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so there is like anime and manga in Japan
Speaker 5: that that does use that energy, but it's it's usually
Speaker 5: like explicitly historical, and sometimes it's like historical revision, like
Speaker 5: what if we had won the war, Like what if
Speaker 5: you know, Admiral Yamamoto. I think Yoku died like early
Speaker 5: in the war, but but there's one very popular anime
Speaker 5: that's like if he had survived, he would have won
Speaker 5: because he was such a brilliant military genius.
Speaker 4: Type of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was the one who planned for Harbor and yeah,
Speaker 3: the other really successful Japanese attacks at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the American entry into the war.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that that exists, Like there is actually a
Speaker 5: whole genre of of this, I forget what it's called,
Speaker 5: but like a revisionist fiction in Japan that that longs
Speaker 5: for for victory. If you don't want to be that explicit,
Speaker 5: I think that people just use Nazis, right, like, yeah,
Speaker 5: see that, and even even in Western media, right, like
Speaker 5: it's historical. But Indiana Jones fights as Nazis because it's
Speaker 5: like an easy villain, like easy.
Speaker 4: Villain to code.
Speaker 5: And so in Gundom, I think the uniforms very like Nazi.
Speaker 5: The use of the flags like in this series, I
Speaker 5: think in episode two, after they win the battle, the
Speaker 5: leader of the forces, the Xeon forces, has like a
Speaker 5: speech in a kind of I think like a school
Speaker 5: yard or something like that in the in the city
Speaker 5: that they've just taken, right, and they unfurl the Xeon
Speaker 5: flags behind him over this like two or three story
Speaker 5: tall building. Yeah, like two big flags, and that is
Speaker 5: like hugely Nazi coded to have like flags unfurled like
Speaker 5: on both sides like that, like long long flags like
Speaker 5: drapery type.
Speaker 3: Flag kind of you think of like the sound of music,
Speaker 3: you know, those long Nazi things that would hang down
Speaker 3: in buildings.
Speaker 5: And he gives and he gives a speech that like
Speaker 5: a victory speech that is like like very you know
Speaker 5: my in fear speech.
Speaker 3: Hm hm, So yeah.
Speaker 5: I like, again, like I am biased because I have
Speaker 5: experienced Gundam and it's like everywhere. Yeah, But I'm curious
Speaker 5: then for your perspective on some of those things, Like
Speaker 5: did you notice them?
Speaker 4: Did you say?
Speaker 3: Huh? I think I definitely did, because, like I said,
Speaker 3: I was watching the whole thing wondering, like it felt
Speaker 3: to me like they weren't reliable narrators. And I don't
Speaker 3: think I noticed specifically that imagery during the speech felt off.
Speaker 3: I don't think I remember the flags, but you say it,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of seeing it again in my head. But
Speaker 3: the fact of like they didn't talk about liberating Earth.
Speaker 3: They talk about how they had to fight Earth in
Speaker 3: order to liberate you know, to like win the freedom
Speaker 3: for their homelands or whatever. But then I kept thinking,
Speaker 3: but then why are you fighting on earth? Like it
Speaker 3: sounds like you've already won. What's happening here? Yeah, I
Speaker 3: for me the larger story you told me. And again,
Speaker 3: maybe I'm giving the authors too much credit here, but
Speaker 3: it fits perfectly with what I thought the show was saying,
Speaker 3: because to me, this is a show that says, let's
Speaker 3: tell you a story from the perspective of the people
Speaker 3: who up till now have been the bad guys. And
Speaker 3: on the one hand, we're showing you that for those individuals,
Speaker 3: they're humans too, they're people like you. They get upset,
Speaker 3: they fear, they have loved, they have husbands and wives
Speaker 3: and children and all that. But also look at how
Speaker 3: unreliable narrators they are, look at how brainwashed they are.
Speaker 3: For me, this felt like an epic tragedy because the
Speaker 3: way that Solari is At the end, she says, I
Speaker 3: recognize that the war is wrong. I recognize that the
Speaker 3: war's forcing children to be soldiers. So I have to
Speaker 3: stop it. And you're like, yes, yes, yes, And then
Speaker 3: she says like, and so to do that, I have
Speaker 3: to fight with the most venue fulfilled soldiers to like
Speaker 3: kill all the Federation people, including all the Federation children.
Speaker 3: So they stop using children. It feels to me a
Speaker 3: lot like kylo Ren's turn, where he is like defeated
Speaker 3: Snoke and him and Ray have fought together and you're like, yes,
Speaker 3: do the right thing. And now he's like, Ray, you
Speaker 3: and I can rule as the leaders, and you're like, no,
Speaker 3: you were so close, but then you went totally the
Speaker 3: wrong way. That's how I saw it, and so like
Speaker 3: for me, this feels like a brilliant way to introduce
Speaker 3: me to that larger story because now I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: now I want to see it from the kid and
Speaker 3: the Gundam's perspective, because yes, I understand that like Solari
Speaker 3: aren't nameless uh that Xeon aren't nameless faceless thugs. They're
Speaker 3: real people, but they're horribly wrong and they're doing horrible things.
Speaker 3: And and to me that's a that that is really
Speaker 3: complexifying the story in a way that now makes me
Speaker 3: really excited to see some of the earlier stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I want to specifically address the invasion of Earth
Speaker 5: aspect of it, because you ask like, well, if they
Speaker 5: just want independence while they're invading Earth, the and and
Speaker 5: this is where you know some people who try to
Speaker 5: defend Gundam or Xeon as like, no, it's not Nazis,
Speaker 5: Like here are aspects that are pulled from other things, right,
Speaker 5: and and yes, like this is a this is fiction
Speaker 5: and it's not gonna be one Nazi Germany because if
Speaker 5: you're gonna do that, why not just make like a
Speaker 5: historical dram, right, So you were you are creating something new,
Speaker 5: but you are borrowing aspects from history, and that that's
Speaker 5: where like the uniforms and the flags. In terms of
Speaker 5: this operation on Earth, I feel like the analogy fits
Speaker 5: much more with what Imperial Japan did. So like the
Speaker 5: colony drop was meant as like intimidation and to put
Speaker 5: the Federation on the back foot because they targeted the
Speaker 5: military base.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: That's that's a Pearl.
Speaker 5: Harbor analogy right there, in my opinion, of like we
Speaker 5: strike first, take out their their nerve center, and then
Speaker 5: after that, what Japan did was just conquer a bunch
Speaker 5: of Southeast Asian nations very quickly and tried to like
Speaker 5: gather steal as many resources as they could and bring
Speaker 5: them back home to kind of hunker down for the
Speaker 5: next phase. And that's what's going on here, is that
Speaker 5: Xeon attacked the Federation and wiped out a bunch of
Speaker 5: their forces early on with the superior advantage of the
Speaker 5: mobile suits, which is also similar to the way again
Speaker 5: like Imperial Japan used fighter jets when prior to that
Speaker 5: naval battles were very much like battleship centric. So it's
Speaker 5: like we have this new fast hitting, like small mobile
Speaker 5: weapon that can hit, hit hard and like can be
Speaker 5: you know, deployed quickly, and we'll take theory advantage, will
Speaker 5: invade Earth in this case and steal and gather up
Speaker 5: as many resources as possible and then take them back
Speaker 5: to our space colonies and then like re you know,
Speaker 5: deploy these resources and tool up for the next phase
Speaker 5: of the war. Well, so the so the sorry, I
Speaker 5: just want to finish up the The evacuation in Odessa
Speaker 5: at the end of this series is interesting because it
Speaker 5: had like from this show's perspective, it has like Dunkirk Fields, right,
Speaker 5: like we got to get out of here. But again,
Speaker 5: like they are the invaders, so you're retreating, you're you're
Speaker 5: not like and and the other part is like a
Speaker 5: large portion of the Odessa evacuation was the resources that
Speaker 5: they gathered up and stole because this is this is
Speaker 5: like close to the Middle East and like all the
Speaker 5: oil fields, right. So the commander in Odessa I believe
Speaker 5: was named Makuve and he is like super German coded
Speaker 5: in terms of like his like plundering aspect, like I've
Speaker 5: plundered Earth, including I believe, like art as well, and
Speaker 5: in the resource like he's very much like a neo
Speaker 5: aristocratic character where he like is like very like ah,
Speaker 5: like I am so like high minded and now now
Speaker 5: I have all these resources, right and and so that
Speaker 5: aspect is missing from this, like the you know, commander
Speaker 5: of Macobay and like the stealing of resources, the plundering
Speaker 5: of Earth's resources, which I mean, that's that's it's hard
Speaker 5: to tell all these stories because.
Speaker 4: They get Gunda is huge and there's been so much.
Speaker 5: But I just want to add that for for your context.
Speaker 3: No, I think it's super helpful. And there's two things
Speaker 3: I'd add. One is, particularly the connection to Imperial Japan
Speaker 3: really helps to make sense because it it felt like
Speaker 3: what they're kind of talked like they were liberating Earth,
Speaker 3: but also like they had no interest in Earthlings or
Speaker 3: anything like that. And part of what I'm remind you
Speaker 3: of is that during that whole periody talking about about
Speaker 3: Imperio Japan conquering all of these other nations and taking
Speaker 3: their resources, which, to be clear, like what they were
Speaker 3: doing wasn't like some new thing. They were just like
Speaker 3: you know, like think about like you know, the kid
Speaker 3: looking at the parents, and like I learned it from you.
Speaker 3: You know, it's exactly what Great Britain in Germany and
Speaker 3: America and all the other nations had been doing to
Speaker 3: the Southeast Asia and other places like that for generations.
Speaker 3: But there's an irony because you know, the way Imperio
Speaker 3: Japan couched it was that they were like, you know,
Speaker 3: the Philippines was a protectorate of the American government, and
Speaker 3: Americans had been slaughtering Filipinos, particularly in the South and
Speaker 3: Mindo now, and so Japan was liberating the Philippines and
Speaker 3: then slaughtered by the tens of thousands Filipinos who didn't
Speaker 3: want to be liberated. They were liberating the Chinese from
Speaker 3: the British, you know, liberating Hong Kong, liberating Singapore, and
Speaker 3: then you know, practically enslaving people and killing them by
Speaker 3: the you know, and and so the idea of Xeon
Speaker 3: kind of seeing themselves in that light makes a lot
Speaker 3: of sense to me, and I get why, especially if
Speaker 3: you know all that you'd want to see it in here.
Speaker 3: I think for me the counterpoint is a that like,
Speaker 3: I'm really excited learning about that now because it's like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: this makes sense because I don't believe the individual soldiers
Speaker 3: think that that's what they're doing, like, and so the
Speaker 3: fact because this feels like like the highest rank we
Speaker 3: ever see is well, for the most part, we only
Speaker 3: see captains and majors and lieutenants. At one point, Wolverine
Speaker 3: shows up and he's a major general. I didn't really
Speaker 3: and I do mean that. He's got like the Wolverine
Speaker 3: like kind of triangle hair, and I.
Speaker 5: Think a character in one of the I think he was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wrote down his name. Where was it? Major? Okay?
Speaker 3: I just run down to Major General Wolverine and sorry,
Speaker 3: I didn't actually write down his name. He's got a
Speaker 3: ridiculous figure, but he like gives them the mission. But
Speaker 3: for the most part, we're not dealing with the commander
Speaker 3: of Odessa. We're dealing with the grunts on the ground.
Speaker 3: And so to me, I think there's something really powerful
Speaker 3: about seeing their perspective and seeing like, no, they don't
Speaker 3: think of themselves as invaders, they don't think of themselves
Speaker 3: as plunderers. And it's not to say that they're right,
Speaker 3: they are very much wrong, but that I kind of
Speaker 3: love that, I kind of love getting to understand their perspective.
Speaker 3: And again this tragic turn of like where they come from,
Speaker 3: you know where they wind up going and in terms
Speaker 3: of Salari deciding like, no, I need to keep the
Speaker 3: fight going in Africa.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, so let me seg that into explaining the
Speaker 5: Africa thing. Yeah, because that I think that is where
Speaker 5: a lot of Gundam fans really got upset.
Speaker 4: Mm hmmm, because of the.
Speaker 5: History of the Universal Century and like we know what
Speaker 5: happens to those people.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So this this story takes place in zero zero seventy
Speaker 5: nine to eighty, like that's the One Year War seventy
Speaker 5: nine to eighty and then in eighty three a Xeon
Speaker 5: remnant like starts a new conflict, and part of that
Speaker 5: conflict involves these Africa troops right that they are involved,
Speaker 5: and they they steal a nuclear a nuclear weapon equipped
Speaker 5: Gundam from the Federation and then use this Africa base
Speaker 5: to launch it into space and then the space Xeon
Speaker 5: Remnant forces use the nuke to attack a Federation fleet
Speaker 5: and then when they are distracted by that, they drop
Speaker 5: another colony on.
Speaker 4: Operations start ust.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so yeah, like it if if we are to
Speaker 5: understand the ending of this show, Captain Solari was holed
Speaker 5: up in Africa, and then if she's still alive, she
Speaker 5: participated in this action that involves stealing a nuke and
Speaker 5: then dropping another colony on Earth, Like she wouldn't have
Speaker 5: participated in like the planning of the colony drop, but
Speaker 5: she contributed.
Speaker 4: To the effort.
Speaker 5: And that's why it's like what do you what are
Speaker 5: you doing? Like why is it? Like You're like we
Speaker 5: have to stop the fighting, like for the children, and
Speaker 5: then yeah, three years later you're gonna participate in this
Speaker 5: and she like what upsets me is her son is
Speaker 5: still alive. Yeah in space just like surrender and go
Speaker 5: be with your son.
Speaker 4: Is how I felt.
Speaker 3: This is where I think this is really different. And
Speaker 3: again it may just be that I'm magrant. I don't
Speaker 3: know the larger contacts, and if I had seen all that,
Speaker 3: I would feel differently. But to me, I wore one
Speaker 3: hundred percent believe that the story knows that that that's
Speaker 3: the whole point, is that because in the story, clearly
Speaker 3: there were people who did exactly that, and it's easy
Speaker 3: to think they're just all mindless barbarians and they're all
Speaker 3: just like I just did an episode on Star Wars
Speaker 3: and Rebellion. I don't know why I'm thinking about rebellion
Speaker 3: a couple days after the election, but here we are.
Speaker 3: And one thing we talked about was how like when
Speaker 3: you know the Nazi storm troops, the stormtroopers of the
Speaker 3: Empire very much supposed to be kind of Nazis stormtroopers,
Speaker 3: and you never see their faces. They're not people, they're
Speaker 3: just automatons, like not literally, but that's how they're portrayed.
Speaker 3: And I want one hundred percent thinks so Lari is wrong.
Speaker 3: I want one hundred percent agree with you. She should
Speaker 3: just go back into space and be with her son.
Speaker 3: But I want one hundred percent believe that she would
Speaker 3: go to Africa and she would participate in these horrible
Speaker 3: atrocities because her mind, that's what she has to do
Speaker 3: to protect kids like her son. And you're right, it
Speaker 3: is completely contradictory everything that the Nazis did was completely contradictory,
Speaker 3: and yet it did happen. Everything that all these empires
Speaker 3: do is completely contradictory to the values that they claim
Speaker 3: to espouse, yet it does happen. And so for me,
Speaker 3: I guess that's my take on it. And again I'm
Speaker 3: not saying you're wrong. You know much more about this
Speaker 3: than I do. And again I might the writers might
Speaker 3: have just been really bad and I'm just inventing and
Speaker 3: kind of headcanning at all. But to me, you're saying it,
Speaker 3: say again, I.
Speaker 5: Just don't buy it because because it's like an information difference.
Speaker 5: I think what this show, the ending, to me, was
Speaker 5: trying to portray is that Solari becomes like after World
Speaker 5: War Two, there were Japanese soldiers famously like stranded on
Speaker 5: islands in the Pacific.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the last one surround the late seventies.
Speaker 5: Who some of them legitimately did not know that the
Speaker 5: war had ended, right. Some of them maybe they knew
Speaker 5: and just chose to keep fighting. But some of them,
Speaker 5: I believe, like legitimately did not know the war ended,
Speaker 5: kept kept like shooting at people thinking that they were
Speaker 5: fighting you know, Americans. And it felt like that's what
Speaker 5: this show was trying to show, is that she's going
Speaker 5: to Africa and then like it's going to keep fighting
Speaker 5: without really knowing.
Speaker 4: What's going on.
Speaker 5: But it's it's like a modern ish information age and
Speaker 5: like based on Double eighty three, start us memory, Like
Speaker 5: the Xeon forces knew they knew they lost, that the
Speaker 5: principality of Xeon had surrendered, and I believe it became
Speaker 5: a republic again or something, and those forces in Africa
Speaker 5: were like, Nah, we're going to keep fighting and we're
Speaker 5: going to wait. And that's what eighty three is is
Speaker 5: like now's our moment. Like the forces in space have
Speaker 5: this plan, like we're going to help them. We're gonna
Speaker 5: do this like for whatever, like remnants of pride we
Speaker 5: have in Xeon even though like the nation had lost
Speaker 5: and had surrendered, but they just like couldn't give it up.
Speaker 5: So I get I get that, I get why those soldiers.
Speaker 4: Are doing it.
Speaker 5: I don't see how Solari becomes one of them or
Speaker 5: like the show just didn't to me portrayed in a
Speaker 5: way that was believable that she becomes one of those
Speaker 5: soldiers because she's got a son. If if she found
Speaker 5: out that her son had died at some point like that, hey,
Speaker 5: like Solari, like there was an attack on a colony
Speaker 5: and your son is dead. Then I get it, like, yeah, vengeance,
Speaker 5: you had nothing to live for, you have everything to
Speaker 5: live for at the end of this. I'm just I
Speaker 5: don't know it. I'm getting very animated because I'm upset
Speaker 5: by no.
Speaker 3: I think. I think it's totally legitimate and I.
Speaker 5: And if you're like, oh, like, well then the writer succeeded,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, well, then I don't want to watch this.
Speaker 3: That's fair, That is totally fair.
Speaker 4: That's what you consider success.
Speaker 3: I guess for me, the only counterpoint I would say
Speaker 3: is that I felt like they established a maternal relationship
Speaker 3: between her and Lashan and that oh and that she
Speaker 3: definitely not in a like actually his mother, but like
Speaker 3: she's his commanding officer. He kind of like turns to
Speaker 3: her when he's not sure what to do, and like,
Speaker 3: I feel like she takes his death, especially the fact
Speaker 3: that he sacrifices himself for her, incredibly hard.
Speaker 4: And I thought you were going to say the Gundum pilots.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, I think I think there's some element
Speaker 3: of that too. I guess my only point is yes,
Speaker 3: I find it incredibly hard to believe that she would
Speaker 3: do that. But we see evidence of do people doing
Speaker 3: things all the time when we think they have all
Speaker 3: the information they should to make the right decision, when
Speaker 3: we think that they have other things to live for,
Speaker 3: and yet they don't make that decision. So I guess
Speaker 3: that's just to why For me, it broke my heart
Speaker 3: when she made that decision, but it felt utterly believable
Speaker 3: that she would do that.
Speaker 5: Mhm, Okay, No, I mean I think that's something where
Speaker 5: we disagree on and yeah, I don't know. I My
Speaker 5: thing is that again, like I don't understand why they
Speaker 5: would make that direct connection to Africa in like the
Speaker 5: Universal Century canon timeline. Yeah, because again, fans know what happens.
Speaker 5: Fans know what those people do, Yeah, and what happens
Speaker 5: with her presumably, and so like if it was just
Speaker 5: like she stays on Earth and I don't know it
Speaker 5: becomes a farmer or something like, I would still be like,
Speaker 5: why don't you just go back to your to your son? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: like stays on Earth and does something other than fight,
Speaker 5: h like, actually do something to help kids, which is
Speaker 5: presumed like what she's telling us, right, right, But but
Speaker 5: her her motivations to me do not line up with
Speaker 5: her actions in any kind of consistent, believable way. Like
Speaker 5: you can say like she's kind of lost in grief,
Speaker 5: lost in revenge, right, like requiem for vengeance. But I
Speaker 5: just don't understand what she's being so vengeful over again,
Speaker 5: like if her son had died, like yes, like emotions
Speaker 5: would overwhelm her like and and I don't. I did
Speaker 5: not see the same thing you did with Lashan maybe
Speaker 5: with the gun dump pilot because it's like he's the
Speaker 5: same age as my son is type of thing, but
Speaker 5: they didn't really draw it out out enough.
Speaker 3: In my opinion, Yeah, I think that I think it
Speaker 3: was rushed to be sure. Let me ask you this.
Speaker 3: Let's say there wasn't a dendum in which we saw
Speaker 3: her going to Africa for that reason. But then when
Speaker 3: it gets to the point that like she like maybe
Speaker 3: she's asked to be part of this mission to go
Speaker 3: steal the nuclear bomb and she knows what's gonna happen
Speaker 3: with it, operations Stardust, and that's her breaking point, and
Speaker 3: that's where she's like, no, we've gone too far. We've
Speaker 3: become the thing we hate I'm not going to be
Speaker 3: a part of this. Would that change it for you?
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't know because like already what this
Speaker 5: show is doing I disagree with on like such.
Speaker 4: A broad level.
Speaker 5: Right, So so like I'm gonna I'm gonna get into
Speaker 5: this part where Gundam having the Gunda as the enemy
Speaker 5: in this show I thought visually worked really well.
Speaker 4: I liked that.
Speaker 5: I don't like it as an introduction for people who
Speaker 5: are unfamiliar with Gundam. You know, as you were going
Speaker 5: into this, right and you had questions of like who
Speaker 5: are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? To
Speaker 5: do that as an introduction in a franchise where it
Speaker 5: is like ninety five percent clear that Xion are the
Speaker 5: bad guys, and the Federation or at least gun Dams
Speaker 5: other good guys, like we can get into governments and stuff,
Speaker 5: but gun Dams are like always the protagonist right of
Speaker 5: these shows, And so like it's an interesting thing to do.
Speaker 5: Like the subversion, I do not like subversion as introduction
Speaker 5: because now you are introducing people to.
Speaker 4: A world where you.
Speaker 5: Your first impression is Zion are the good guys, and
Speaker 5: then if you go in with that mindset and learn
Speaker 5: more like, yeah, maybe you shift a little, but you
Speaker 5: always have that start where you're like, but but Xeon
Speaker 5: like man Xeon.
Speaker 3: Oh, and I guess maybe that I think that's maybe
Speaker 3: what I haven't fully explained. I never I thought the
Speaker 3: show was very clear that Xeon are not the good
Speaker 3: guys that are wrong. That that yeah, that if I
Speaker 3: haven't made that clear, let me really re emphasize that.
Speaker 3: That's that's what I think that the show is showing.
Speaker 3: It's a villain origin story. It's one d P of
Speaker 3: villain origin story.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: And so maybe it's kind of like you know, the
Speaker 3: people who grow up loving Anakin and and maybe you're
Speaker 3: right that a lot of in the same way that
Speaker 3: some people are like, no, Anakin was right, it wasn't
Speaker 3: his fault. And I'm like, wow, you missed the point.
Speaker 3: It's possible. I'd be curious for other people to write
Speaker 3: in and tell me, like, did you think Xeon was
Speaker 3: the good guys? Because like, one of the first things
Speaker 3: I noticed is that the Gundams, the face of the
Speaker 3: robot is fairly human. It has two as, it has
Speaker 3: what looks kind of like the impression of like a face. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the the the Zechas the Zaku thank you are just
Speaker 3: kind of like this head with like a light going
Speaker 3: back and forth where it's eye would be. That looks
Speaker 3: very robotic and looks, frankly, a lot like the the
Speaker 3: Cylons from Battlestar Galactica. I think, timing wise, this may
Speaker 3: have come first. I'm not sure the original series Abottle
Speaker 3: been real close. Yeah, yeah, but certainly by I think
Speaker 3: episode three or four, I think I think if you're
Speaker 3: watching the show and are thinking that Xeon are good guys,
Speaker 3: you've completely missed the point, because I thought the show
Speaker 3: was really hammering home these people think they're the good guys,
Speaker 3: but they're wrong, and that's the whole point.
Speaker 5: But I will point out, and I'm not meaning like
Speaker 5: this is a gotcha, but even in this episode, in
Speaker 5: this discussion earlier, you referred to the Xeon group as
Speaker 5: the heroes, and that could just be habit and but
Speaker 5: but like it, it's important to be clear, like they're
Speaker 5: the protagonists of the show. We had this discussion with Watchmen, right,
Speaker 5: like they're the protagonists of the show, but they're not heroes,
Speaker 5: or like they're the main characters, but they're not protagonists.
Speaker 5: I don't know like where we want to draw these distinctions, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead, sorry you continue.
Speaker 5: But again, like, I have this problem when it's the introduction,
Speaker 5: because I'm also familiar with Gundam fandom, and there's lots
Speaker 5: of people who, even with like knowing all of all
Speaker 5: of the history, are like, yeah, Xeon, like they're cool,
Speaker 5: and okay, I have to say this. In addition to
Speaker 5: all of the uniform and flag imagery, the Xeon Forces
Speaker 5: have a salute that in Japanese is jikujeon, which translates
Speaker 5: to seek Xeon. Like it is literally a translation of German,
Speaker 5: and it's like it's doesn't get more clear than that.
Speaker 5: And the fact that they don't use this salute in
Speaker 5: this show, I think like is deliberate and a very
Speaker 5: good thing, but it's it's part of the military, you know,
Speaker 5: tradition of.
Speaker 4: This army, and.
Speaker 5: It's deeply problematic, like to have that in this media
Speaker 5: and fandom that people jokingly use that salute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just to further again, it's not even that
Speaker 3: to the German words. It's that the sieghaile was the
Speaker 3: sort of what you see, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 3: like the hoorah or whatever. Uh, for American military, that's
Speaker 3: what you said, and it would often be immediately followed
Speaker 3: with Hayle Hitler. Yeah, so it's very that is yeah,
Speaker 3: that and that's important. And I like if you'd ended
Speaker 3: with her joining the Africa group and one of the
Speaker 3: you know, her meeting the rest of them and they
Speaker 3: say seek Xeon like that, I think would have hit
Speaker 3: people a lot harder and and any know, it's interesting
Speaker 3: because what I'm thinking about as we discussed this is
Speaker 3: how recent Star Wars properties, particularly and Or have created
Speaker 3: have given us the stories of people in the Empire
Speaker 3: who they've humanized, and a lot of people hated that
Speaker 3: and said, no, don't do this. The Empire is supposed
Speaker 3: to just be awful, particularly because there are people out
Speaker 3: there who's like, maybe the Empire had a point. Vater
Speaker 3: was cool. So I think he's right. And maybe I
Speaker 3: love it because of the way I loved those characters,
Speaker 3: because I loved learning. I just I don't believe that,
Speaker 3: with the exception of a very small minority, that most
Speaker 3: of the enemies that we fight against, most of the
Speaker 3: people who want to do terrible things are rubbing their
Speaker 3: hands and saying mooha HAA ultimate power. You know, I
Speaker 3: believe most of them think that they are right, and
Speaker 3: I think there's a real danger in telling a story
Speaker 3: from the perspective of the villain and the story in
Speaker 3: which the story is saying that the villain is a
Speaker 3: hero because the hero they think they're the hero. And
Speaker 3: like I'll give an example, I think there's an argument
Speaker 3: he made that the Joker movie was trying to do
Speaker 3: something similar to what like I think this show was
Speaker 3: doing of like showing you the perspective of the Joker
Speaker 3: as though he thinks he's the hero, but you're supposed
Speaker 3: to realize by the end or if the whole thing,
Speaker 3: he's wrong. But millions of fans didn't get that, and
Speaker 3: there was a lot of really problematic parts of fandom
Speaker 3: that were really all about, No, the Joker is right.
Speaker 3: That's the whole point of this movie. And so I
Speaker 3: totally get that. And I'm curious to hear from other
Speaker 3: people who watch the show. Where do you come out
Speaker 3: on it, because I definitely, as you're saying, more, I
Speaker 3: don't have the reaction you do, but I can very
Speaker 3: much understand why you have that, particularly given like the
Speaker 3: larger context of there are lots of people who want
Speaker 3: to see Zion as the good guy because a lot
Speaker 3: of people like authoritarianism these days, and that's a growing
Speaker 3: trend around the world as we're seeing in all sorts
Speaker 3: of ways. So so yeah, that does help me to
Speaker 3: really contextualize, like where you're coming from with this and
Speaker 3: why we see it so differently.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And for me, like I grew up with Gundam,
Speaker 5: I and I love I love the mobile suit designs
Speaker 5: of the Xeon By and large, I think Gundam is
Speaker 5: kind of tacky. Like Gundam, the mobile suit is kind
Speaker 5: of tacky, And I love the design of Xeon mobile suits.
Speaker 5: I love some of the characters, but they are evil
Speaker 5: fascist terrorists right, like and it's similar to like Darth Vader.
Speaker 5: I can love his character design. You know, James ol
Speaker 5: Jones's voice rest in peace, and you know, all of
Speaker 5: these aspects in the watching a fiction. But it it
Speaker 5: it gets complicated when you as a fan reached the
Speaker 5: point of doing a doing a military salute that has
Speaker 5: like such direct echoes to historical evil.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, and and you.
Speaker 5: And and like the uniforms as well, Like I read
Speaker 5: a story about there was like some anime convention and
Speaker 5: a bunch of fans dressed in like authentic Xeon uniforms,
Speaker 5: but they look they look Nazi. These fans went to
Speaker 5: like a Holocaust remembrance museum or something like that and
Speaker 5: then stood in front of it and then did did
Speaker 5: seek Xeon in front of it? That's disgusting, Yeah, absolutely disgusting.
Speaker 5: Like so you have to draw the lines and fandom
Speaker 5: right that. That's that, And that's the p I have
Speaker 5: with the show is that, like it's trying to be
Speaker 5: really complex. I agree, and I think there are good
Speaker 5: aspects to that, not as an introduction, because I think
Speaker 5: as an introduction to Gundam you just got to have
Speaker 5: like a basic Gundom like is the hero mobile suit
Speaker 5: story like this is cool? Yeah, story, Like there are
Speaker 5: complex Gundumb stories.
Speaker 4: I love.
Speaker 5: There's a story called War in the Pocket where one
Speaker 5: of the main characters is a Xeon pilot and he berefents,
Speaker 5: befriends a young kid in a colony, and they like
Speaker 5: it is a heartwarming tale. It's like okay, oh, Ricky,
Speaker 5: like how do you.
Speaker 4: Like reckon that with this?
Speaker 5: Right? Like, but but they tell it in a way
Speaker 5: where he's like a young pilot he's like fairly new,
Speaker 5: like they show that, and he is not. He's just
Speaker 5: a soldier. He's not part of the Bearer context. And
Speaker 5: I'm not saying that it's an excuse, but as a
Speaker 5: storytelling device here you're like Solari, she's a captain, she's
Speaker 5: a veteran. They mentioned a battle, the Battle of Loom,
Speaker 5: and so like there's kind of an implied history to her.
Speaker 5: And it's like it's like, well, like did she participate
Speaker 5: in the gas thing? Like she she probably knows about
Speaker 5: the colony drop, and like what does she think about it?
Speaker 5: And then to have her at the end like go
Speaker 5: to Africa and participate in what we know, it's like,
Speaker 5: eh no, not like this gun dumb, like don't do
Speaker 5: sympathetic you know Xeon like this please?
Speaker 4: That is my opinion.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess what I think about when you
Speaker 3: say that she knows about the colony drop where my
Speaker 3: mind originally?
Speaker 4: I mean everyone should know about it?
Speaker 5: Well right, yeah, I don't think you can hide that
Speaker 5: is to.
Speaker 3: The book that I think. I think you've talked about
Speaker 3: Loving as well Lost Stars, which is all about you know,
Speaker 3: these young imperial pilots and.
Speaker 4: In Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, and in the Death Star, and there are
Speaker 3: some of them who find a way that they're clearly
Speaker 3: upset about the destruction of all Doron, but they're fed
Speaker 3: propaganda and they're able to justify it to themselves. And
Speaker 3: I think that's how That's what I think is how
Speaker 3: a Solari could justify to herself. I think he's wrong
Speaker 3: and very clear.
Speaker 5: I think if you want, if you want this character.
Speaker 4: To be that, you have to acknowledge it. I think
Speaker 4: mm hmm, like the colony.
Speaker 5: Drop, like it happens throughout Gundam, but this specific colony
Speaker 5: drop is like so central to the story of the
Speaker 5: One Year War, like yeah, thank you. If you want
Speaker 5: to have this character Solari, you have to mention it,
Speaker 5: like maybe maybe have the doctor who's he's he's like
Speaker 5: you m r C. Which I think is supposed to
Speaker 5: invoke Red Cross. They never say Red Cross, but Theles
Speaker 5: have him at you know, he travels, he's like a
Speaker 5: neutral doctor like red Cross, but he travels with the
Speaker 5: Zones and I think he does have an interesting like
Speaker 5: moral discussion with one of them about like you shouldn't
Speaker 5: have killed them and the soldiers like it's user them
Speaker 5: and type of thing. But I haven't say, like, you know,
Speaker 5: at the campfire, be like what how can you guys
Speaker 5: fight for Xeon? Like when they drop this colony blah
Speaker 5: blah blah, like something, you know, conversation like that which
Speaker 5: would introduce, you know, more people to the to the
Speaker 5: history of Gundam and to the interesting ambiguities of morality here,
Speaker 5: like of fighting, like who you're fighting for and what
Speaker 5: they're doing. See.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of this comes down to whether
Speaker 3: my reaction is typical or not, because.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's why I didn't want to
Speaker 5: tell you too much before we started recording and like
Speaker 5: introduced to you and say like, well you don't know
Speaker 5: about this, which is not like a criticism of you,
Speaker 5: like of course, say like this is the context of
Speaker 5: where this show exists in Gundam.
Speaker 3: And I guess that's what I want to convey, is
Speaker 3: what from what you are saying for me? And it
Speaker 3: may well be that I'm the outlaw and I'm be
Speaker 3: very curious how other fans who have just seen the
Speaker 3: show feel about all this. For me, this is the
Speaker 3: perfect introduction to everything you're talking about, because I am like,
Speaker 3: when you tell me that the Xeon I saw in
Speaker 3: this also did these like horrific acts. It doesn't surprise
Speaker 3: me at all. It just like I have a feeling
Speaker 3: of like, oh, now I'm seeing more of the context
Speaker 3: and I love that and not love it, like oh
Speaker 3: it's so cool, but in the like, yeah, okay, I
Speaker 3: was right that Xeon's were wrong, and like it, and
Speaker 3: I think you're right. Like I think if the show
Speaker 3: had started in the seventies with this and then you'd
Speaker 3: pull back, people would be like, whoa, why'd you start
Speaker 3: with the bad guys? That doesn't make any sense for me.
Speaker 3: I think this is part of how things have changed
Speaker 3: somewhat since the seventies, and certainly not everyone agrees with me.
Speaker 3: But if you tell me that an oppressed colony does
Speaker 3: terrible things to the oppressor colonizer, I'm immediately going to
Speaker 3: jump to I don't care how bad they were. If
Speaker 3: you don't want them doing bad things, don't oppress them.
Speaker 3: And that's very much to say I don't care is false.
Speaker 3: I do care, and I don't want them to do that,
Speaker 3: and that is very true of the situations today. But
Speaker 3: also sort of like it's gonna be hard to get
Speaker 3: me to say that the colony fighting oppression is the
Speaker 3: bad guy, because I'm gonna be like, yeah, Sagerera did
Speaker 3: terrible things, loosened to terrible things. It didn't make the
Speaker 3: fight against the empire wrong. But if you instead show
Speaker 3: me the fight and show me that actually, no matter
Speaker 3: how bad the oppression was in the beginning, they're so
Speaker 3: focused on vengeance now that they're the real enemy. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: now I get this in a way that so I
Speaker 3: don't know, maybe it's just kind of like you got
Speaker 3: introduced to it at a very different time and for
Speaker 3: me getting introduced to it this time, this is the
Speaker 3: introduction I need. But I want to look more at
Speaker 3: fandom because you're right, if a whole bunch of people
Speaker 3: are watching the show and in finding the proseon people,
Speaker 3: I mean like, yeah, you're right, so Lauri was great,
Speaker 3: then I'm completely wrong and you're completely right.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think the problem is that, again, we have
Speaker 5: like such an extensive history. To me, like is clear,
Speaker 5: Like the way that Gundam has been written is clear,
Speaker 5: and there are interesting moral ambiguities and sympathetic elements and
Speaker 5: sympathetic like individual characters that you can create on the
Speaker 5: side of Xeon and write interesting stories. But when you
Speaker 5: get down to it, like the the government or the
Speaker 5: military committed war crimes right like, and there's there's probably
Speaker 5: things that the Federation did that are bad like because
Speaker 5: that's war, like we talk about war in that context.
Speaker 5: But like the colony drop is like such a red
Speaker 5: line for me. It is one of the most horrific
Speaker 5: things you can do, right like. And there's like a
Speaker 5: nuclear analogy as well to that. So yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 5: I think, I think if you're interested in follow up,
Speaker 5: I don't know where you can watch it currently, but
Speaker 5: double eighty War in the Pocket is like, to me
Speaker 5: one of the best gun of stories and an interesting
Speaker 5: Xeon sympathetic Xeon soldier story.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I'll check it out, but I'd like to
Speaker 3: just start with some of the more original stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: and may it might be watching reading Wikipedia or watching
Speaker 3: the Delaname and see where it goes. And I'll just
Speaker 3: add one last thing and then we can wrap up.
Speaker 3: We'll do a quick bonus action on child Soldiers. We're
Speaker 3: gonna keep it pretty shtuse it's already been a long episode.
Speaker 3: And Riki, I thank you so much because as you
Speaker 3: say more, I can very much understand why my perspective
Speaker 3: is incredibly upsetting because there's all the stuff that I no,
Speaker 3: and so I really appreciate you being able to stick
Speaker 3: with it and help educate me and help me better
Speaker 3: understand all of this.
Speaker 5: No, And I want to say, like, I appreciate your
Speaker 5: perspective on this, because that's why that's what I wanted.
Speaker 5: I wanted to hear from someone who doesn't, you know,
Speaker 5: know the first thing about Gundam really and how this
Speaker 5: what impression is left on you? And that's that's important. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And I just I want I want people to be
Speaker 5: careful because we talk a lot about impressions of media
Speaker 5: and in this day and age, like you can get
Speaker 5: lost in rabbit holes and pipelines.
Speaker 4: And I do think like, and we'll have more.
Speaker 5: Like follow up episodes on this, right, like with a
Speaker 5: full mental alchemist yep, that I do believe that there
Speaker 5: are probably dangerous pipelines that go from I'm willing to
Speaker 5: say seek xeon and do this, do this anime salute
Speaker 5: to hey, like, if you're interested in that, right, let
Speaker 5: me tell you about other things that are cool cool
Speaker 5: on the same vein.
Speaker 3: You don't go to a Holocaust memorial and do that
Speaker 3: unless you've been sucked into some very anti Semitic wormholes.
Speaker 3: And I can very much see that as being a
Speaker 3: being a problem. There the last just one line I
Speaker 3: want to quote because I think, like, for me, this
Speaker 3: was one of the things that like from the very beginning,
Speaker 3: had me questioning Xeon. You know, I don't think. I
Speaker 3: don't think a moral war is really a possibility. I'm
Speaker 3: very much against like just war theory. I'm I'm I
Speaker 3: understand the need to fight against depression, but I think
Speaker 3: beyond that, like wars generally, there's an awful thing, and
Speaker 3: even in a fight against oppression, I think it's never
Speaker 3: going to be good and pure and right. And again
Speaker 3: that's exactly what we talked about in the Star Wars
Speaker 3: episode we just had. But you know, I like one
Speaker 3: of the definitions of war crime that I've always understood
Speaker 3: is that a soldier is not supposed to lose their
Speaker 3: individual conscience, and that when you know, even when given
Speaker 3: an order to you know, massacre civilians, if you follow
Speaker 3: that order, you're committing a war crime. And like, yes,
Speaker 3: the higher punishment is going to be for the person
Speaker 3: who ordered you to, but you're supposed to know better
Speaker 3: to to not obey that order. And again I haven't
Speaker 3: been in the military. I'm saying that kind of blithely
Speaker 3: though it's an easy thing to do. It's obviously incredibly complicated,
Speaker 3: but I feel like that is kind of a benchmark
Speaker 3: of morality. And so early in the show, I think
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure in the first episode, maybe the second,
Speaker 3: and they're talking to the doctor about and he's saying
Speaker 3: at one point, one of them is saying, like, you know, so,
Speaker 3: how do you guys decide who the enemy is? And
Speaker 3: one of the members of Solaris squad says, look, my
Speaker 3: higher ups tell me who the enemy is. And the
Speaker 3: exact quote is they point I shoot m Yeah, And
Speaker 3: that was so chilling to me. That was such a clear,
Speaker 3: hit me over the head with these are not good guys.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're fighting in a war that one point had
Speaker 3: some good motivation or even still does, but to use
Speaker 3: the Star Wars analogies that I love so much, this
Speaker 3: is the dark side. These are people who are on
Speaker 3: the dark side now, who have forgotten the idea that
Speaker 3: they're fighting, that they've they've lost their humanity. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that and Again, maybe a lot of other people are like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's a cool line. I like that. If so, then yeah,
Speaker 3: the show was nowhere. You're as good as Giket's message across.
Speaker 3: But to me that was such a hit you over
Speaker 3: the head with these are And again, I think you're right.
Speaker 3: I did use the word heroes, meaning that What I
Speaker 3: meant was that the show introduces them as though they're
Speaker 3: the heroes. Yeah, and it's pulling the rug out from
Speaker 3: under us. And I think that line was the first
Speaker 3: real tug at that rug.
Speaker 4: No, that's fair, all.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, listeners, please let us know what you think.
Speaker 3: Would love to hear from you, especially either if you've
Speaker 3: watched all the other shows, or if you haven't watched
Speaker 3: the show, or if you've no idea what any of
Speaker 3: this is. You're just listening to us. Let us know
Speaker 3: what you think. Yeah, listening to one.
Speaker 4: I would really love.
Speaker 5: To hear from listeners on, especially if you, like Matthew,
Speaker 5: are not very versed in Gundam or at all, and
Speaker 5: you watch this and and you listen to this and
Speaker 5: did it did you have the same impressions as as
Speaker 5: Matthew or myself, Like, did this discussion change your mind, Like,
Speaker 5: how do you feel about this? Because I think this
Speaker 5: is again I didn't like it. I'm gonna say that,
Speaker 5: like I didn't like this show, like from aesthetic point
Speaker 5: of view.
Speaker 4: I didn't like it from a.
Speaker 5: As a gun dam fan because of what it was
Speaker 5: doing with the with the time where it was in
Speaker 5: the timeline and all that. But I just I was like,
Speaker 5: I think we have to talk about this because of this,
Speaker 5: And I really enjoyed this discussion, and I want to
Speaker 5: thank you for for like giving me your perspective on this,
Speaker 5: and I think it helps me a lot.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad and I I appreciate because it's funny.
Speaker 3: This episode wound up being about things totally different than
Speaker 3: I thought it was gonna be about. I think that's
Speaker 3: because you didn't pre warn me. And I really appreciate
Speaker 3: that because I feel like the discussion we wound up
Speaker 3: having is a larger discussion that I think movies like
Speaker 3: Joker and other things like it Fight Club raise for us,
Speaker 3: which is that if you're making media where with the
Speaker 3: idea is that the protagonist is not the hero and
Speaker 3: you want the audience to figure that out, how direct
Speaker 3: you need to be Because I think I believe that
Speaker 3: the people who made Joker weren't attending to valorize him.
Speaker 3: But I think the fact that so many people walked
Speaker 3: away thinking it is a failure of the writers and
Speaker 3: the movie. And like you said, if people watch this
Speaker 3: and walk away thinking Zion is pretty cool, then to
Speaker 3: quote you, I think you're right. The show has failed.
Speaker 3: And we got into that. But I think there's an
Speaker 3: interesting larger discussion about what's your responsibility as a filmmaker,
Speaker 3: as a writer, as a creator, if you're trying to
Speaker 3: do something that where the protagonist is actually not the
Speaker 3: hero they think they are, what's your responsibility to really
Speaker 3: make that clear.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a hard one because like the Joker, even
Speaker 5: like no, no one is confused about the Joker, Like
Speaker 5: we all know who the Joker is as a character,
Speaker 5: right from all the dumb movies like comic books, even
Speaker 5: if you don't watch them, like you know, just from
Speaker 5: existing in this media environment, right who the Joker is, Like, Oh,
Speaker 5: he's a batman villain and he's kind of crazy, crazy
Speaker 5: clown if that's all you know. Yeah, even still that
Speaker 5: that movie can do that like that, And that's why
Speaker 5: I was like, I don't like this as an introduction, right,
Speaker 5: The Joker movie is not an introduction to the Joker
Speaker 5: for anyone, I believe, but this like very much is
Speaker 5: in my opinion, and that's why I was like very uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no that I think it's really fair. And I
Speaker 3: think that's because just like there are lots of people,
Speaker 3: as you said, walking around going even before this, saying
Speaker 3: yet we love Xeon, you know, seek Xeon. There are
Speaker 3: lots of people who watch that movie. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: the Joker was right all along, and I think that's
Speaker 3: dangerous and bad.
Speaker 4: So oh yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: I have to add one more thing, Like I kept
Speaker 5: thinking about this throughout the episode, and so like the
Speaker 5: word zion, I think like for English speakers, you may
Speaker 5: wonder like does this have any connection to zion like Zionism, And.
Speaker 4: In my research it it just does not at all. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 5: It is an unfortunate coincidence because in Japanese it's geon
Speaker 5: and what I have what I have ascertained, is that
Speaker 5: Zionism is actually in Japanese pronounced chion, so it's like
Speaker 5: a very different opening sound. So I don't I don't
Speaker 5: think it's meant to echo that and then like early
Speaker 5: translations of gun dam you know, spelled it with a
Speaker 5: with a J, you know, or an X in some
Speaker 5: cases like it because translations like until you reach a
Speaker 5: certain point in history like aren't consistent for these types
Speaker 5: of things. And at some point they landed on z
Speaker 5: z io ze o n right, which which much closely
Speaker 5: echo more closely echoed Zionism.
Speaker 4: But I just I don't think it was there initially.
Speaker 3: I think that's really helpful, and and and me I'll
Speaker 3: add the reverse context of and again I'm not a
Speaker 3: Hebrew scholar by any means, but like Zion is a
Speaker 3: translation of a Hebrew word that has at times been
Speaker 3: pronounced closer to it starting with an S more like
Speaker 3: oh czio, and and that the actual translation is probably
Speaker 3: like if you hear someone speak it who understands Hebrew,
Speaker 3: the word they're gonna use is kind of between a
Speaker 3: Z and s. It's not Zion, it's most zion, Like
Speaker 3: I'm not properly so.
Speaker 5: The Japanese pronunciation of a Chian may be a more
Speaker 5: closely direct to that then yeah.
Speaker 3: Or at least you know, because what I imagine is
Speaker 3: like the Japanese probably got it from Portuguese or English
Speaker 3: or another. We're also doing their version of the Hebrew translation.
Speaker 3: It makes total sense. Yeah, yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 4: It's funny, like small tangent.
Speaker 5: But Japanese like when they take foreign words and use
Speaker 5: them like that, because like Germany, in Japanese the deuts
Speaker 5: which is Deutsche, right right, So so I find that
Speaker 5: interesting anyway, that's cool.
Speaker 3: No, no, I mean I'll just add the reverse also
Speaker 3: happening of how like we could call the city of
Speaker 3: Beijing Peking. You know, it comes through all these things,
Speaker 3: all right. Anyway, this has been fantastic. Thank you all
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